Leaving Google

Post by downrightmike » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 5:26 AM UTC

slimsag wrote: post #14

cube00 wrote: post #2

> PMs made all the decisions. Engineers (at least at my level) had very little influence. This is interesting given Google used to have a reputation for being an "engineer led" organization, I guess that's slowly changing over time.

You left out the best part: > We were expected to hit precise deadlines on multi-quarter projects (within two weeks), and when that inevitably didn't happen, we had to track all the time we spent on anything in 30 minute increments. It felt very cog-in-the-machine.

Post by choppaface » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 5:27 AM UTC

ergocoder wrote: post #110

choppaface wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dr. Gebru was fired for having approached a lawyer about workplace issues. (She told Jeff Dean and others that she was doing so in an email made public). That triggers Legal to retaliate and look for a reason to fire the employee, immediately. Jeff Dean let the conflict drag out 6+ months because he thought he had control of the situation (and he was wrong). Without Jeff Dean’s persistence, Dr. Gebru would probably h…

> Dr. Gebru was fired for having approached a lawyer about workplace issues. That is just very dishonest. She gave an ultimatum. Execs accepted the ultimatum. You are gaslighting other people on this topic. At the very least, you should've acknowledged that this is up to an interpretation. Regardless whether she was fired or quit, she was toxic as hell. She dragged Jeff Dean into an unrelated matter in public and imp…

Post by choppaface » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 5:30 AM UTC

freyir wrote: post #118

choppaface wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dr. Gebru was fired for having approached a lawyer about workplace issues. (She told Jeff Dean and others that she was doing so in an email made public). That triggers Legal to retaliate and look for a reason to fire the employee, immediately. Jeff Dean let the conflict drag out 6+ months because he thought he had control of the situation (and he was wrong). Without Jeff Dean’s persistence, Dr. Gebru would probably h…

Did she threaten litigation before or after she posted an angry rant telling her coworkers to stop working? Before or after she demanded that the company release the name of an anonymous reviewer? Before or after she told them to schedule her last day if they didn’t meet her demands?

Post by xyzelement » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 5:32 AM UTC

3grdlurker wrote: post #75

lotsofpulp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And scale is simply because greed. Is it possible that it is simply because of survival? The general theme of business I see is if you do not keep up with others, you will lose to your competitors. Especially in a winner take all business with network effects and low marginal costs like tech.

Keeping up with the competition, if you’re talking about quality of product/service, isn’t the same thing as growing yearly revenues, which usually entails scaling up operations and product lines to more places and more customers, which no business has to do just for the sake of survival. See for example long-surviving small- to medium-scale family businesses. There doesn’t seem to be another motivation for chasing Y…

Post by choppaface » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 5:34 AM UTC

freyir wrote: post #136

joshuamorton wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're factually wrong. I was literally able to view her paper, and it's approved status, in the internal tool where papers are approved for publication.

This directly contradicts what Jeff Dean wrote: “A cross functional team then reviewed the paper as part of our regular process and the authors were informed that it didn’t meet our bar for publication” (emphasis mine).